


A Photo's Worth A Thousand Words (or one really good blackmail)

by FireflySong



Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [18]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Blackmail, Embarrassment, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Humor, except this time its josh teasing chris for his crush like the little shit he is, heyo!, its the follow up for deals & autographs that no one wanted!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24837151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflySong/pseuds/FireflySong
Summary: For as long as Chris had known Josh, he had always been obsessed with the idea of having his best friend's kid named after him. An obsession that unfortunately for Chris, never faded as they got older. Follow up to Deals & Arguments.Written for Day 18: Photo of the Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge over on tumblr.
Relationships: Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley, Chris Hartley & Josh Washington
Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770988
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	A Photo's Worth A Thousand Words (or one really good blackmail)

**Author's Note:**

> lets be honest here. if ash is the one who write 'ash hartley' into her books when she was younger, then chris absolutely scribbled their initials into a heart exactly once by accident. and josh being josh, he absolutely latched onto that like flies to honey...
> 
> you can find me over on tumblr at love-fireflysong if you feel so inclined!

For almost as long as Chris had known him, Josh had always been obsessed with the idea. He wants to say that it started when they were in fifth grade, when their teacher, Ms. Franks, announced to the class that since she was pregnant, that she was going to be taking a leave of absence just before the end of the school year. Someone, he couldn’t recall who, had asked if they had a name for the baby picked out, but he could recall the response as though it had happened only yesterday.

“It’s still a little too early for names, but if they’re gonna be a girl, we’re thinking of naming her after a mutual best friend of ours.”

Ever since then, Josh had been all over the idea. Every dare, every piece of blackmail, every ‘dying’ wish was the same: “Name your kid Josh.” When he was younger, Chris would laugh and shove Josh away with a roll of his eyes. It was funny back when he was like ten or eleven, or hell, even when he was thirteen! He was gonna be a super cool app developer, he wasn’t gonna have time for marriage, much less kids. All of his time was gonna be spent developing super awesome games and apps that were gonna save the world! Or something. 

While his mind didn’t exactly change the moment he met Ashley the summer after he turned thirteen, he is ashamed to admit it was pretty dang close. Josh introduced Ash to him in their favorite fast food diner, and declared the three of them to be best friends, til death do us part, yada yada yada. At the end of July, the three of them were inseparable, and by the beginning of school that September, he was _gone_. Donezo baby! Head-over- _fucking_ -heels for the little braces wearing, red-head that read Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare for _fun_.

And unsurprisingly, Josh never let up on his demand. Nope, he did not! In fact, he got even _worse_ about it. 

He needed to borrow a pencil for math? Name your kid after me. 

Can he spot him a couple of bucks for ice cream? Only if you name your kid Josh. 

When did the Battle of the Alamo take place? 1846. But I’ll tell you the right answer if you swear to name your first-born after me. 

While extremely exhausting to try and avoid, Chris was able to do so easily. He just started asking the kid who sat behind him in class for pencils, borrowed money from Ash instead, and he’d rather fail history then name his kid after Josh. Thankfully, after his first bombed history exam, Ash made all three of them do their homework together constantly, so the last one became a moot point. Barely.

Eventually, Josh tapered off on the demand, but not until after the start of the next school year. Most people probably would have stopped a few weeks in, but most people weren’t Josh Washington. When he wanted something, the guy stuck to his guns and didn’t give it up for nothing. Not that he stopped entirely of course, Josh still brings it up during dares and shit but it becomes immensely more manageable. He notices that he doesn’t ask it of Ash during these game, but when he considers the completely mortified look she gets on her face when ever _he_ gets asked, Chris figures that its probably for the best.

(The fact that he not only stops that day Chris walked back into Ash’s bedroom and she’s as red as her hair while shoving something into her desk drawer, but that’s also when the mortification starts, he doesn’t clue into until years later.)

So when Josh walks up to him during their first period together with the absolute shittiest of shit-eating grins on his face, Chris is on red high alert.

“Oh no. What did you do?”

The laugh Josh gives is low and dark, and if Chris’s hackles weren’t raised earlier, they sure as fucking-hell are now. “Oh no, Cochise. It’s not what I’ve done, it’s what _you’ve_ done.” With that, Josh proceeds to just slam a binder onto Chris’s desk, and he looks to see that he recognizes it easily.

“Okay...? I don’t see what my math notes have to do with anything.”

Another laugh, this one somehow lower and darker then the first. Oh boy, those alarms going off in his head aren’t getting any quieter. “Oh, it has absolutely _everything_ to do with you.” Before Chris can even respond, Josh is already flipping through the pages, past older pieces of loose-leaf that ripped from the binder coils that he hadn’t bothered to repair and the newer notes with their edges still intact, and stops at the most recent. At first Chris doesn’t see anything, it’s all his notes about logarithms that he had taken the previous day, the blue ink scratchy and messy all across the page, and then he does. And he absolutely blanches at the sight and hurriedly slams the binder shut, putting his face in his arms as he covers his head, actually _whimpering_ as he refuses to look at Josh.

He doesn’t have to look to see the triumphant grin on Josh’s face, he can already imagine it pretty clearly. 

“ _Oh fuck me._ ”

The worst part is that he didn’t even know it was there in the first place, he never would have lent his notes out otherwise. Josh had been missing more and more school recently, claiming that he was having killer headaches and they were making him sick, so Chris had done what friends do for each other and lent him his notes. What he didn’t realize was that at some point when he had been taking notes down, he had scribbled a little heart in the margins with the initials CH+AB inside. Something he never would have done if Josh had been there with him, but he hadn’t been, and so Chris had zoned out thinking about meeting up with Ash after school to bring Josh his homework.

He was _so_ dead.

“What do you want?” Though muffled through his arms, he cringed at how small and weak his voice came out.

God, he could hear the stupid grin in Josh’s voice when he answered. “You know exactly what I want, Cochise. What I’ve always wanted.”

Chris didn’t remove his head from his arms on the desk, but he did turn it enough to narrow his eyes at Josh. “Are you fucking serious dude? Really? You’re still on about that shit?”

“I will never stop. You know this to be true.”

“I am not naming my stupid kid after you! I mean, maybe I won’t ever have kids. I’m certainly not gonna if I have to name them Josh!”

Josh rolled his eyes, but the wide grin never left his face. “You don’t have to name _all_ of them after me. Just one.” Somehow, Chris watched the grin get even wider as a thought came to him. “Maybe two, if they’re twins. Can you imagine? The twins, Joshua and Joshlynn, it’ll be great!”

“Okay, now I’m _definitely_ never having kids.”

Josh gave a short bark of laughter. "Please, like that’s ever gonna happen. You wanna know why, Cochise? Cause if Ash is gonna want kids, then _you’re_ gonna want kids.”

He couldn’t help it. He really, truly couldn’t help it. The image of little kids with bright red hair and glasses flashed through his mind unbidden, and he groaned loudly and put his face back into his arms to hide how red his face had gotten.

“Anything else, dude. Make me do anything else. I will strip and run through the entire school _naked_ if you want, just don’t make me promise you this stupid shit.” God, if only he hadn’t drawn that _stupid_ heart on his _stupid_ notes, then none of this would be happening right now! He sat up in his seat at the revelation. “Wait. I can just rewrite the page and burn this one.”

“Oh, Chris Chris Chris.” They way Josh shakes his head in disappointment sends around a million different alarm bells ringing. “Do you really think that little of me? I took like a million pictures my dude. This shit is saved _forever_. I can send this to Ash whenever the fuck I want. I can post this on whatever social media I feel like and it will live on the internet forever, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Oh. Right. Shit. “I can’t believe that you can literally blackmail me with anything right now, and this is the hill you’re dying on.”

“So are we in agreement then?”

“I cannot believe I’m saying this, but yes. Fine. I will name my stupid kid after your stupid ass.”

“Oh please. Your kid may be stupid, but there is no way that any kid of Ashley’s is gonna be.”

“...I hate you _so_ much right now.”

\--------------------------------------------------

Chris hadn’t meant to respond the way he did when he found the old notebook he had bought for Ash years ago. He really hadn’t. He had just been excited to find out that she had kept the stupid thing after all these years, he hadn’t even been joking when he told her that he had spent ages in the store looking for it. (”It has to be perfect, Mom! I can’t just buy her any stupid old journal, she loves these things! I mean, what if she hates it?”) So he had opened it and started flipping through the pages, laughing with her at all the stupid misspellings and bad grammar that her thirteen year-old self had written.

And then he reached the last page.

Things had really been out of his hands at that point. Something about seeing her writing her name down as ‘Ashley Hartley’ had just ignited something in him. The images of her walking down an aisle, of them with matching rings on their fingers, of kids running underfoot, was too much for him to handle. So Chris had kissed her. Kissed her like he was never gonna be able to do it again. Them falling onto her bed had been an accident, though a happy one, as they both didn’t hesitate to deepen the kiss.

Finally, he had pulled away and her giggle when she moved to fix his glasses had taken his breath away. It had quickly returned when his eyesight improved enough to really take in the image of Ash flushed pink with her red hair spread out under her on the bed, and he was suddenly reminded that she was going to be living with him soon! That at the end of the month _this_ was the sight he was going to be waking up to every morning, and he had never wanted anything so bad in his life.

“So,” his voice is rougher than usual when he speaks and he can feel her shiver under him at it. He makes a note for future reference. “Ashley Hartley, huh?” 

He watches her bite her lip, and it takes everything in him to not kiss her again. Two years in, and he’s still amazed that he’s allowed to kiss her whenever he wants, that she encourages it even! “Be honest with me,” she starts off and Chris has never been told to do something so easy in his life, “what do you think of the name Joshlynn?”

He stares at her for just a moment, just letting her words sink in, and then falls forward to smother himself in her hair, his shoulders shaking he’s laughing so hard. Of course. Of _fucking_ course he did.

“I can't believe he got you too.”


End file.
